


A Basement Office with a View

by thegoodthebadandthenerdy



Series: Idioglossia [1]
Category: Fantastic Four (Comicverse), Spider-Man (Comicverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - X-Files Fusion, Bickering, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, M/M, Short One Shot, Strawberry Blond Johnny Storm, in which johnny is scully and peter is mulder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 09:55:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18363677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoodthebadandthenerdy/pseuds/thegoodthebadandthenerdy
Summary: They had told Peter the new guy would be in sometime that day, but they had failed to mention…anything else about him. So when he'd stepped into the room, light hair catching the projection, face set favoring a grimace, Peter thought he was pretty- lost. Pretty lost.-They had told Johnny everything, but it was all rather last minute. He still had quite a few thoughts on the matter, though.





	A Basement Office with a View

**Author's Note:**

> god. okay. so this came about after i was asked if there was any spideytorch potential in the xfiles (thanks kait!) and as it turns out. theres a lot (also i just wanted strawberry blond johnny but thts beside the point)
> 
> im watching the show for the first time and am over halfway through s6 but i wrote this while watching the end of s3 i think? so i dont exactly remember how tightly this holds to the structure of 1x01 but i had a lot of fun putting both my own and a spideytorch spin on it!

All Johnny could hear was the painful tick, click, picking of the clock on the far wall. It was standard issue, rounded off white plastic with a lagging second hand that left him feeling like he was looking into a funhouse mirror.

He blinked sluggishly and his ears finally popped, leaving him to the sound now rushing back into him.

"Agent Storm, do I need to repeat myself?"

He looked up, quicksilver eyes and a jackrabbit heart. Fingers itching to tap against the slick faux leather accent of the wooden chair arm below him.

"No, sir- not at all."

A winning smile held beneath the surface, muscle memory to pave bumpy roads, to get him out of conversation, to stall and stall until he caught his bearings from where they were snapping, rebounding around him.

When the trickle-down had said he'd be seeing reassignment, Johnny figured they'd whisk him from Violent Crimes back to whatever classroom they could shove him into. The youth wouldn't train themselves and all that, but this. This was….

"You'll report for duty at once, then. That'll be all, Agent Storm."

Johnny hadn't ever exactly been one to take kindly to a dismissal, but he practically bolted from the room at that one. His skin was far too hot, air trapped at the collar around his neck and so forth. He'd thought a lot of things for that meeting, but getting sent to roll with the rats and the other inhabitants of the building's bowels hadn't been anywhere near his agenda. It was good he hadn't written any plans in pen, because the ink would have long been smudged.

He tugged at his tie, not enough to loosen it, but enough to give him something to do with his hands while he tried to reconcile his newly unearthed life plans. 

This was fine, this would be fine, this was- not something to call home to Sue about, maybe, possibly, probably. 

"Going down?" a woman asked, looking up at him with no less than three other questions on her mouth. Johnny's eyes swung around, taking in the elevator and the daylight and- shit, how long would it be before he saw daylight again?

"I'll take the stairs," he heard himself reply, already headed for the corridor before she could reply.

It was a long way down, but it was good, it was- okay so he stopped and had a small panic attack somewhere around the third floor, but after that he was actually pretty great! There was nothing like a little lack of oxygen to get your brain firing on all pistons and tell yourself to _pull it together this is far from the end of the world, John!_

And it was - far from the end of the world, that is. Getting assigned to work with a Bureau legend? A great learning experience! Getting assigned to a department that seemingly only had one other person in it? Well that was just grounds for being able to get his hands on a lot more cases, make his mark sooner rather than later!

God, he was going to need to get those motivational speech tapes from the back of his closet that Ben had jokingly sent and listen to them on the ride to work now.

By the time he made it to the basement - the _basement_ \- he had mostly calmed himself. 

The second floor flight of stairs had been wondering if the reputation matched the man - or, more aptly, if the guy was secretly a dick or not - while the first had been spent worrying about it being nothing more than a paper pushing job. 

But that was long behind him. Long, long behind him as he walked down the long, long hall getting farther and farther from that medical degree he'd gone to school a long, long time for. 

His new office was easy enough to find. Though that might be an automatic given, as it was the only one around. The door didn't really inspire much confidence, which was all right because Johnny was made of false bravado with a sprinkling here and there of gravitas. He had plenty of confidence.

He just wasn't sure if he had enough to overcome the fact that he was pretty sure it once said janitor where it now said agent.

He let his fingertips tap at his glasses - thin, overly large metal frames - his hair - a cool roll of strawberry blond parted every morning to the left - and even his tie - still ugly, still a gift, still in use - before his knuckles clacked against the door - thin, a little sticky, quickly killing him.

When there wasn't a response, he tried the handle. It gave way easy enough, and it wasn't like it wasn't kind of his office too, so he pushed his way in, expecting- well, after the shitshoot of the day so far, it was on par with what he was expecting.

The lights were off, but there was a projector rolling, images in black and white flung on the wall just beside the door. Still, the lack of light didn't stop him from making out the stacks atop mounds of paper and case files and notes and discarded sunflower seed wrappers. It was like being in the dumpster at a baseball field.

The walls were plastered so thick with notes and crime scene photos and what have you that he couldn't even begin to imagine what the color was beneath them. And he almost didn't even see the (one lone) desk pushed against the far wall.

This couldn't be right. This couldn't be the office of Special Agent-

And then he heard his voice.

"What do you see?" 

All he caught in the sliver of the gray light shadowing his face was a thumb pressed to a lower lip, and a seed pressed firmly between teeth. Johnny didn't particularly think that the kind of challenge that was pitting itself in his stomach was the kind the other had in mind, so he turned wordlessly to the projections, ignoring an old fire in his chest.

It was just shy of hazy, a dirt forest floor, leaves and pinestraw and a body. It was undoubtedly the least shocking thing he'd been in the middle of all day.

The projection sat awkwardly across the lenses of his glasses; the fun house mirrors were back. Still, he stepped without hesitation to the wall and began a quick sweep of the victim - a young woman, obviously not having been there long enough to incur any of mother nature's wrath or pity. That was all that was immediate, really, but he could feel eyes on the back of his head, the nape of his neck, his spine. There was something else, and he wasn't going to jump at the first obvious thing.

So he was precise yet practical, shoved his hands in the pockets of his loose enough to be in fashion slacks and tried to think like he was actually part of the X-Files. 

Which, he was now.

And there it was.

"These puncture wounds on the lower back," he said, one hand moving from his pocket to waver close to the picture so as to indicate them. They were two bruise-dark marks in the exact spot where Johnny had almost gotten a regrettable tattoo in college."I'd need to see something clearer, hell the body itself, but- what was cause of death?"

It was easier like this, diving right into work. No hoops to jump through that he hadn't been training his body for years to do so. 

"Officially they're calling it exposure," he replied, long-fingered hands moving for a blanched case file. His head bowed over it like it was a devotional, finger skimming the page, leaving behind a streak of salt from the seeds he'd been gnawing on. He frowned - and what a frown it was, overly expressive to the point of decadence - and wiped his hand on his wrinkled pants' leg almost pleadingly. Charming.

"But?" Johnny prodded.

It was easier like this too in the sense that he could feel himself stumbling into getting lost in the unfortunate and gruesome rather than the piqued interest that made the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention as he studied a sloping, ghostly profile.

"But," he conceded, looking up with the echo of something on his lips. "There's an X-File that matches the puncture mark description down to the placement."

Johnny realized soon thereafter in the tight, but not ill-fitting, silence that he was going to be doing a lot of the talking, if only to get himself through the day. The only move the other man made was to shut off the projector and cut the lights on before dropping back into his chair, seemingly fine in the shuddering quiet.

No answer obvious or immediate, Johnny finally followed up with, "Catch me up to speed- what was it?"

He looked back up at him, a smile playing at his face, but not quite his mouth. Johnny was familiar with challenge - overly so, Sue would say - and more than aware that it came in plenty of forms. The one that was now riding high brows and comfortably-serious brown eyes was one he wanted to win.

"Abduction, of course."

"Of course," Johnny rocketed back, only to wish his could tie his tongue in a bow and go rot in the front seat of his car. _Hotshot_ , he cursed himself.

"Agent…?" the other trailed, eyebrows tucked in concentration behind his slender frames. 

Johnny wasn't sure what they'd told his new partner about him. Wasn't sure if they'd told him anything aside from a tentative window of when to expect him. So he took the out.

Extending his hand, he replied, "Johnny Storm. Looking forward to working with you."

He took it in a surprisingly firm grip, but gave it a light shake. "Peter Parker."

Johnny had heard that name more times than he'd heard God's. A storm surge of Academy memories returned to him as they dropped hands, both the memories and the men shuffling around uncertainly.

Parker pushed his hand through his hair as he leaned back in his chair, abandoning the contest of wills Johnny hadn't even realized they were having until it was over. "So, Storm, are you a believer?"

"I'm a believer of a lot of things, Parker, I'll need you to be more specific."

He also wanted to hear him say it, whatever it may be - didn't want to assume, even if the clear assumption was the line of best fit from the points on the map which read 'derelict basement office' and 'needs a partner rooted in science to debunk his life's work.'

"The paranormal, extraterrestrial life- is any of this working for you?" he asked, head tilted to the side with a touch of long-learned humor that Johnny found himself believing instead of bristling at.

Johnny knew what it was to be brushed to the side - to be taken, but not taken seriously. He almost wished he believed.

_Almost._

"I prefer to believe what's in front of me," Johnny said, and admittedly, he was surprised to find there wasn't even a hint of malice in that declaration. Just a kind of frankness he hadn't given another human being this fast in far too long. "But I'm open to seeing a lot of things."

Parker grinned, a flash of enjoyment before it was gone just the same, and stood to meet Johnny. They made it eye to eye, the height a shock to Johnny's system. But it all seemed to click into place, a perfect fit for the rest of him. Long limbs that had probably been gangly in his younger years, all covered in loose-fitting clothing, sleeves rolled to his elbows, shoes whose treads and sides seemed to be flecked in mud.

"Well, I'm right here in front of you, and I'm telling you that woman was abducted."

**Author's Note:**

> i,, might do some other small pieces for this 'verse? like i feel like i could definitely do something with them in arcadia
> 
> if youre interested in tht or just want to chat i'm on tumblr @foxmulldr !!


End file.
